Chomsky/Innovation

[Salinas17 at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/30/05 3:27:52 AM, twood at uwc.ac.za writes:
<< For Chomsky, the culture of science is the real 'counter-culture' to the 
reigning ideology...  >>

The difficulty of course would be in conjecturing a society where the 
"culture of science" is "the reigning ideology."   What would such an animal look 
like?  How would it affect the everyday life of the person who bakes Dunkin 
Donuts every morning?  Is science a way of life that can operate on a democratic 
level?

Or is the idea that the culture of science must be represented by an elite 
minority whether that minority represents the real counter-culture or the ruling 
ideology?  

In a message dated 6/30/05 8:02:33 AM, pustetrm at yahoo.com writes:
<< Personally, as a linguist, I have never felt “threatened by science” or 
innovations,... This comes as no surprise because resistance to innovation is a 
deeply human trait (probably evolutionarily based, if we want to discuss 
that). >>

I'm sure that most of us here feel, as you do, that we are not particularly 
tainted with the dreaded "fear of innovation" trait that plagued countless 
generations of our human and pre-human ancestors.  If only it had been dropped 
from our genetic repetoire earlier, we humans would have been using cell phones 
and disposable razors in late paleolithic times at minimum.

However, given that not all "innovations" end up generating positive results, 
one really doesn't need to reach way over to evolution to explain such 
resistance.  In fact, it might be more accurate to lay the blame on something that 
used to be called "common sense."  

If we really must identify "deep human traits" that are "evolutionarily 
based," my candidate would the appetite for reality programming on television -- my 
theory is that it is a trait directly inherited from those of our protozoic 
ancestors who developed the first light sensing organs and it has been all 
down-hill from there.

Regards,
Steve Long